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Wednesday, 10 August 2016

More on Hillary Clinton

Newly
Released Emails Highlight Clinton Foundation’s Ties to State
Department

Aide
to Bill Clinton asked Mrs. Clinton’s assistants to set up meeting
between State, foundation donor

Long-time
aide to Hillary Clinton Huma Abedin watches as Mrs. Clinton testifies
before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Oct. 22, 2015. While
at the State Department, Ms. Abedin received a special designation
that allowed her to work at the agency while also doing outside work
at the Clinton Foundation. PHOTO: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

WASHINGTON—A
conservative watchdog group on Tuesday released 296 pages
of emails from former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton’s
personal server, including many exchanges that weren’t handed over
to the government as part of the Democratic nominee’s archive.

The
new emails, released by the group Judicial Watch, offer fresh
examples of how top Clinton Foundation officials sought access to the
State Department during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure. The documents
were obtained through a
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against
the State Department.

A
spokesman for the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit organization
established by former President Bill Clinton, didn’t
immediately return a request for comment. Mrs. Clinton had attached
her name to the foundation after she left the U.S. government and
subsequently removed it when she started her presidential campaign.

In
an exchange from April 2009, a longtime aide to Mr. Clinton told
three of Mrs. Clinton’s top advisers that it was “important to
take care of” a particular person, whose name has been redacted
from the document. That person had written the aide, Doug
Band, under the subject line “A favor…” to thank him for
the “opportunity to go on the Haiti trip,” which the person
called “eye-opening.” Mr. Band was a chief adviser in helping Mr.
Clinton launch the Clinton Foundation after leaving the White House.

Huma
Abedin, a longtime confidante of Mrs. Clinton who is now working
for her campaign, replied to Mr. Band: “We have all had him on our
radar. Personnel has been sending him options.” Mr. Band responded:
“Great.” Mr. Band was an important figure in helping Mr. Clinton
set up his postpresidential career and has since co-founded a New
York company called Teneo Holdings.

While
at the State Department, Ms. Abedin received a special designation
that allowed her to work at the agency while also doing outside work.
During that period, she held two other positions, at the Clinton
Foundation and at Teneo.

Mr.
Band didn’t return a request for comment.

In
a separate exchange, Mr. Band asked Ms. Abedin and Cheryl
Mills, another top aide to Mrs. Clinton, to set up a meeting
between a State Department official and a top donor to the Clinton
Foundation.

“We
need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re
Lebanon,” Mr. Band wrote in April 2009. “As you know, he’s key
guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp.”

Mr.
Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire, has donated between $1
million and $5 million to the foundation, according to its
disclosures.

Ms.
Abedin responded with the name of the State Department official, Jeff
Feltman, who had served as a U.S. ambassador to Lebanon before
becoming U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs.
“I’m sure he knows him,” she wrote. “I’ll talk to Jeff.”

Fifteen
minutes later, Mr. Band shot back: “Better if you call him. Now
preferable. This is very important.”

A
spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said in a statement: “Neither
of these emails involve the Secretary or relate to the Foundation’s
work. They are communications between her aides and the President’s
personal aide, and indeed the recommendation was for one of the
Secretary’s former staffers who was not employed by the
Foundation.”

Mr.
Chagoury, who has longstanding ties to the Clintons, has a
controversial past. In the mid-1990s, he was known for his close
association with Nigeria’s military dictator, Sani
Abacha, which helped him land lucrative business contracts in
construction and other areas. In 2003, Mr. Chagoury helped organized
a Caribbean trip where Mr. Clinton was paid $100,000 for a speech.
Both Mr.
Chagoury and Mr. Clinton attended Mr. Band’s wedding celebration in
France in 2007,
the Journal reported at the time.

The
Nigerian embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to
inquiries about Mr. Chagoury.

The
latest emails provided further fodder for Republicans who have been
critical of Mrs. Clinton’s ties to her family’s foundation during
her time at the State Department. While Mrs. Clinton is no longer
involved with the foundation, her husband and daughter, Chelsea,
continue to attend the foundation’s events. Mr.
Clinton said in June that he would have to rethink his role at
the foundation and its fundraising if his wife is elected president
in November.

“That
the Clinton Foundation was calling in favors barely 3 months into
Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the State Department is deeply
troubling, and it is yet another reminder of the conflicts of
interest and unethical wheeling and dealing she’d bring to the
White House,” said Michael Short, a spokesman for the
Republican National Committee, in a statement Tuesday.

The
emails also served as a reminder of the Clinton campaign’s struggle
to shake the email controversy. Mrs. Clinton had her private server
set up about a week before she was sworn in as secretary of state.
She later said she used the private account because it was more
convenient than keeping separate personal and official email
addresses.

But
the issue resurfaced last week when fact-checkers and critics
disputed Mrs. Clinton’s claims that Federal Bureau of Investigation
Director James Comey had characterized her answers, both in
public and private, on the issue as “truthful.”

Mr.
Comey has said she didn’t lie to investigators; he declined to
characterize her public comments. Later that week, she said she
had perhaps “short-circuited” her response,
since her public remarks echoed her testimony to the FBI.

Republican
nominee Donald
Trump criticized
her comment, tweeting that “anybody whose mind ‘SHORT CIRCUITS’
is not fit to be our president!” In a second tweet, he added: “Very
dangerous!”

Keith
Olbermann Special Comment: Clinton-Obama Assassination

Keith
Olbermann delivers a special comment about Hillary Clinton and her
recent reference to Robert Kennedy's assassination and the inference
to why she is continuing her campaign. "My husband did not wrap
up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary
somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy
was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."